It’s very unusual for the Met these days—or any major opera house, in any era—to present a glossy new production with two different stars in the leading role.
Author: Gary Hoffman
Castor & Pollux, ENO
Daring dramas which probe dark psychological depths; music that embodies
visceral emotional conflicts, and stirs heated, often contradictory, passions;
the text and score shaped into radical musico-dramatic structures, employing
shockingly inventive harmonic language and orchestral timbres.
German tenor thrills Met audience in solo recital
http://articles.boston.com/2011-10-31/ae/30342753_1_mein-ganzes-german-tenor-recital
Don Giovanni, Metropolitan Opera
According to legend, when composing Don Giovanni, Mozart completed
the overture last. It was written the night before the opera’s premiere, while his wife Constanze, a fervent taskmaster, plied him with food and drink to make sure he stayed awake.
Delayed by Injury, Giovanni Still Arrives
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/arts/music/mariusz-kwiecien-in-don-giovanni-at-the-met-review.html?ref=music
Oedipe, La Monnaie, Brussels
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/27a154c0-fe28-11e0-bac4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1c0MJ4NlZ
Renata Pokupić, Wigmore Hall
In this appealing lunchtime recital programme, Croatian soprano Renata Pokupić demonstrated a rich, varied tonal palette and strong communicative skills as she spanned one hundred years of European song.
Intertwining facets of Italian High Baroque
‘Erotic oratorio’ is the odd-sounding definition devised by modern scholars, such as Howard E. Smither, for those pious music dramas employing sex-laden plots from the Bible, the Apocrypha or the lives of Saints in order to give the audience moral instruction in a quasi-operatic, if generally unstaged, form.
Opera North’s Queen of Spades – in pictures
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2011/oct/20/opera-north-queen-of-spades-in-pictures